What does wonky have to do crafting a business and a life?

While dreaming + planning for this site, I was searching for something, some short phrase the describe what the essence of this thing is.  I knew the site would encompass….everything.
Everything about building and crafting a business (life). But how to sum up my…my manifesto? My truth? What is most truly me?

Wonky.

The word I get teased for using in my knitting lessons and classes. My description for anything imperfect, wobbly or not-quite-right (yet still delightful).

I began to journal about wonky. Why I use the word, why I embrace it, why we shouldn’t be afraid to be a little wonky.

Ah, but not just wonky. Unapologetically wonky.  I don’t just acknowledge that yeah, we’re all a little wonky, I think it’s imperative to embrace it, to love our wonky bits, to be who we are without apologizing.

All that writing became my Unapologetically Wonky manifesto. It’s a synthesizing of everything I’ve been learning through the growth of my business.
About sovereignty.
About truth.
About connection.
About creativity.

From Havi. From Kelly. From Danielle.
From Diane. From Kim. From Rachel-Marie.

Unapologetically wonky is a way of being that influences my teaching and creating.
Embracing the imperfections in my student’s work and helping them accept it as a natural part of learning.
Avoiding holding up any one standard of awesomeness.
Recognizing that yeah, I fall. Offering a hand for anyone who feels a bit wonky.
Teaching through modeling. Creating through connecting (colors, people, ideas, information).

It’s this idea, this embracing of the wonky that informs my work: what I teach,  how I teach, who I teach.

It’s what  draws my right people.
People who feel a bit wonky. Whether it’s their knitting, their selling, their aversion to feeling salesy, or their isolation as they craft their business.

And that’s what wonky is about.
Connecting.
Creating.
Sharing.
Despite  imperfections, despite hesitations, despite being wobbly (and sometimes falling).

If you need a bit more wonky in your inbox, get it by clicking here.

Lean in a little closer.
I have a secret to share.

Don't tell anyone, but I have a super-hero alter-ego. You know her as the Blonde Chicken.

And no, she doesn't fight for chicken rights (although we are both vegetarians).
And she doesn't dress like a chicken (because that would be ridiculous).
She's the Blonde Chicken for a totally adorable reason (if you don't know the story, go read it here), that hasa nothing to do with chickens (and only circumstantially with being blonde).

Even if you don't know it, you've already met her.
Well, you've met her if you thought you were talking to me, at a craft show or at TNNA, or on Twitter or on Etsy or anywhere that has anything to do with yarn.
(If you ran into me at the grocery store, then yeah, it was just me)

What?

For the past, oh, 4 years she's been running the show.

The Blonde Chicken started by approaching a local yarn shop (in Dayton, OH) and offering to dye some custom  colors (I was busy managing a paint-your-own-pottery studio at the time). Then she photographed more yarn and put it on Etsy.

When I moved to Tennessee and got a desk job, she was NOT detered.
She took the yarn to an art gallery and did a spining demonstration during an Art Walk (the nerve!).
She's the one that applies to craft shows (and then has the guts to actually GO and talk to STRANGERS) and twitters and heck, lots of the time she writes what you find on this here website.

Why?

The Blonde Chicken is strong and brave and silly and passionate about eye-popping brights and socially-responsible fiber.

And when I first ventured online, as a dreamy girl with a teeny tiny business idea, I was too shy. Too shy to post on a forum. To shy to blog. To shy to tweet.

I know you wouldn't believe it if you've met me at a craft show, but I am painfully shy.
Turn bright red and stutter-kind-of-shy. Painful!
I put off applying to craft shows because I could not imagine the horror of talking to people. real! live! people!

So I called upon Blonde Chicken. She jumped in with both feet; making friends, snapping pictures, writing, dyeing, spinning.

Everything that seems too too. Too overwhelming. Too scary. Too out-there.

All those things, the Blonde Chicken does.
With silly music blaring and dye pots bubbling and chat a-chattering, we do it together.

That's just weird.

Yeah, I know.

But the thing is…it's helpful.

Helpful to not feel like I have to put myself out there.
Helpful to ease my way into it.
Helpful to remember that somewhere in me is the ability to do epic stuff.

I've been thinking a lot about the role of the Blonde Chicken in my business because now that I have a real, in-person yarn shop and teach real, in-person classes, a lot more people are meeting me. Tara.

And I realized that, in the beginning, I needed Blonde Chicken. Needed her to go out and biggify the us and the yarn.

But now, thanks to growing with Blonde Chicken, I'm not so shy. I'm not so afraid to say “Hi, I'm Tara, I make yarn.”

I'm tempted to end this with a sappy “If you're nervous about biggifying…find your inner super-hero”, but, well, that's too sappy.
Instead, I just want to say, in the words of a multi-national corporation I don't even buy from: Just Do It.

Find the thing (Victoria-shmoria can help with that) and do the thing.
Put yourself out there, share your thing, be brave.
And if you just ca not imagine doing any of that, make up an alter-ego.

It'll be fun.
And weird.
I promise.

PS. Ha! I'm not the only one! The super-smart Maryann has an (imaginary) assistant, Tina! Love the hair, Tina!